Matt Johannesen – Sensor(y) Metaphor: Elephant in the Room

This isn’t very well thought out, I’ll admit – once again this week I’ve been way more caught up with the technology available rather than finding a decent project subject. I kept fixating on the flex sensor in the Arduino kit, wondering what on Earth I could make with it… but today I thought of…

Matt Johannesen – “Bricked”

I may have bitten off more than I could chew with this one. I decided to make my Augmented Selfie a reflection of my current state, very fuzzy and uncertain while still blocked in (it comes easy when one tries to overload and lead a new game development team simultaneously) – and to go about…

Matt Johannesen – Yell-O-Meter

For this project I wanted to scale down my scope from the start – which I neglected to do in previous projects – so I made a simple sound meter. To make things a little more interesting, I drew each frame on a chalkboard in Salisbury and took a photo. The max patch just switches…

Matt Johannesen – Groovin and Groovin and Groovin and…

I really wish I knew why this exists. I really do. There’s something about this little character – known to some as “the groovin guy”, or “the ‘woo yeah baby oh yeah woohoo yeah…’ guy” to others – that is just so entrancing and relatable. My friends and I have seen this image enough times,…

Matt Johannesen – Paper Nature v2

For my updated version of the Paper Nature project, I decided to focus entirely on the digital portion since I hardly had anything to show for it last time, and because I was already satisfied with how the book turned out. Ironically, I also decided to do away with the paper castle concept – after…

Matt Johannesen – Paper Nature Part 1

My plans changed a bit from what I listed in my concept post, due to a breakthrough I made during class on Monday. I had mentioned briefly that one idea for a season “selector” circuit was an almanac, a little book that the user could actually flip through to control the Max patch. I figured…

Matt Johannesen – Paper Nature Concept

As I started doing some research for this project, I was immediately drawn to this image of a paper popup castle: Its flat coloring makes the structure seem deceptively simple, even though it clearly required some very careful design work to execute properly. It also reminded me of the flat, stylized environments of Monument Valley,…

Matt Johannesen – Interactive Desk

After several days of simultaneously fighting off Max, OBS, and my antivirus software, I have finally completed my interactive animation: Although it was a pain to get the Max patch to play video properly on my computer, I had a great time thinking up some fun animations for the arrangement of things on my desk…

Matt Johannesen – Animated Abstraction

For this project, I decided to try making something I had been thinking about since the last assignment: a series of infinite falling or rising squares, forming some sort of colorful tunnel. This was partly inspired by some of the square works of Frank Stella: I knew from the start that in order to get…

Matt Johannesen – Geometric Abstraction

For this assignment, I was inspired by Thomas Downing’s “Dots” series, in which dots of complimentary colors form circles or grids: I knew from the start that I wanted to make buttons to change the dots’ colors, but couldn’t quite figure out how to make them use complimentary colors. Instead I opted for the dots…

Matt Johannesen – Bio

My name is Matt Johannesen, and I’m a dual major in CS and IMGD Tech from the distant land of Los Angeles, California. I can say with confidence that my everlasting love for LEGO building got me hooked on programming. Like any young LEGO builder, I loved the idea of seeing my creations come to…